Thursday at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis, President Barack Obama defended the federal government by saying, “That whole idea that government is the problem or the enemy is just not true.” But he did concede shortly after that “some federal workers… do bone-headed things.”
He citied as an example–to not “paint with a broad brush”–the Veterans Affairs waiting list scandal that has reportedly caused the deaths of dozens of veterans and caused tens of thousands more to not get the medical and psychological care they need, while their names sit on waiting lists for years.
Obama claimed, “If we see things not working the way they should, we got to crack down and reform it,” adding that, for those who don’t die waiting, “In the VA health care system, once people get in, the quality of care, the satisfaction rates for customers are actually better then in private sector health care. So we can’t generalize like this”
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